Memory Profits Signal AI Spend

SK Hynix said first-quarter profit hit a record as artificial-intelligence customers kept buying scarce memory chips at rising prices. (skhynix.com) The South Korean chipmaker reported 52.5763 trillion won in revenue, 37.6103 trillion won in operating profit and 40.3459 trillion won in net profit for the quarter ended March 2026. Revenue rose 198% from a year earlier, and operating profit was up 406%, according to the company and Reuters. (skhynix.com) (reuters.com) SK Hynix said demand stayed strong even though the first quarter is usually a seasonal slowdown, helped by sales of high-bandwidth memory, high-capacity server dynamic random-access memory modules and enterprise solid-state drives. CNBC reported the company said high-bandwidth memory demand remains tight and supply constraints could last for years. (skhynix.com) (cnbc.com) High-bandwidth memory is the fast, stacked memory that sits next to artificial-intelligence processors and feeds them data. SK Hynix is a key supplier to Nvidia, so its results are a direct read on whether data-center builders are still spending heavily on AI systems. (cnbc.com) (reuters.com) That matters after months of investor anxiety that Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Alphabet might slow the multibillion-dollar buildout of AI infrastructure. Reuters said SK Hynix’s forecast that AI memory demand will exceed manufacturing capacity helped ease those concerns on April 23. (reuters.com) The market reaction spread beyond Seoul. Reuters said investors rotated back into U.S. technology shares on Thursday, with AI spending and early earnings growth feeding fear of missing out on the rally. (reuters.com) SK Hynix said cash and cash equivalents rose by 19.4 trillion won from the prior quarter to 54.3 trillion won, giving it more room to fund capacity and packaging needed for advanced memory. The company also said it would expand production bases in line with demand while trying to secure stable supply. (skhynix.com) The pressure point is not ordinary PC memory but the specialized chips and packaging used in AI servers. CNBC said SK Hynix warned that slow capacity expansion could keep parts of the memory market undersupplied into 2030. (cnbc.com) For now, the company’s quarter says the AI buildout is still showing up in the physical supply chain: more orders for memory, higher prices for scarce parts and bigger profits for the suppliers that can ship them. (skhynix.com) (cnbc.com)